The state of Guyana’s fishing industry at present
The good news is that the sector is growing in terms of its contribution to the country’s GDP. According to acting Principal Fisheries Officer in the Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Tejnarine Geer, the sector has grown from 3% of Guyana’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2003 to an estimated 5-7 % at present.

“It was the third most important export after sugar and gold,” according to GO-Invest’s website, “amounting to nearly US$62 million in 2005. The U.S. is the primary market for most seafood exports. In 2004, however, Guyana was certified to export seafood to the lucrative EU market, creating a range of new market opportunities. While the seafood industry primarily consists of marine species caught in Guyana’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), aquaculture has recently attracted significant investment growth.”

The fisheries sector is diversifying with the Ministry of Agriculture spearheading ventures into aquaculture, a sub-sector which has attracted millions of US dollars in investment in recent years; and we have an EEZ that is roughly equivalent to 64% of Guyana’s 214,970 square kilometers of land.

What then is the big problem? The short answer seems to be success.

“Seafood production,” quotes a 2004 USAID study on the industry, “has emerged as a major contributor to the country’s GDP, export earnings, and employment level. These gains could be short term and detrimental to the future of the industry.”

All the production graphs in the Draft Fisheries Management Plan for Guyana (2007-2011) show general downward trends in production marked by occasional annual spikes. Large penaeid shrimp (prawns) production peaked in 1995 at 2998 tonnes but was around or below 1200 tonnes since 2003. Seabob production peaked at almost 20,000 tonnes in 2003 – up from some 6,000 tonnes in 1998 – but plummeted to 9,236 tonnes the very next year, going up only 4000 tonnes in 2005. Snapper landings peaked at 612 metric tons in 2003 but dropped down to 399 mt in 2005, the lowest since 1999. Even coastal pelagic fish, like mackerel and small tunas, which are only caught incidentally have seen a decline in recent years. Spanish mackerel, for example, reached 1143 metric tons in 1999, but dropped won to 214 mt the next year, eventually creeping up back to 523 in 2005 – still slightly below the 1997 landing figure.
“Since 1995,” reads the USAID report, “concerns have been expressed on the rate of harvest and sustainability of fisheries stock. Every study or forum since then has reconfirmed these concerns. In the absence of recent scientific assessments, studies are continuing to extrapolate rates of harvest and ratio of by-catch from production figures. The results are showing declines and harmful trends.”

“The growth of the industry,” according to former Principal Fisheries Officer and industry consultant, Mr. Reuben Charles, “is dependent on the resource out there. This is a living resource and you have to manage it.”

From the Ministry of Agriculture perspective, the Draft Fisheries Management Plan –itself indicative of the onus placed by the government on resource management – aims among other things,

“*To maintain or restore populations of marine species at levels that can produce the optimum sustainable yield as qualified by relevant environmental and economic factors, taking into consideration relationships among species.

*To preserve rare or fragile ecosystems, as well as habitats and other ecologically sensitive areas, especially estuaries, mangroves, seagrass beds, and other spawning and nursery areas.”

At least one large company seems to be up to date with the spirit of these goals. According to Mr. Ronald Deen, Chief Financial Officer of Pritipaul Singh Investments (PSI), his company – the only one in Guyana licensed to catch prawns, and a major harvester of seabob – is adamant on operating in a sustainable manner. There is an annual close period of two months for the harvesting of seabob, which allows the shrimp stock to replenish. And the company is currently looking into methods of phasing out the tickler chain method of harvesting prawns – tickler chain harvesting involves running a chain along the seabed, the prawns nesting ground, causing them to jump up into the net which trails behind the chain.

It is not that there aren’t other very serious issues facing the industry. Rising fuel costs are hampering the sustainability of local trawling and seafood processing operations (see story on page 6) and the issue of security for artisanal fishermen, scheduled for attention in the next issue GCER, is of very pressing concern to the industry. But the impact of high fuel prices is exacerbated when fuel is wasted on the small catches caused by the depletion of the stock, as the declining figures in yield per vessel make clear. And once the security concerns are addressed, in the long term what may well happen is that the artisanal fishermen may well find themselves at sea with nothing in their nets.

“The growth of the industry is dependent on the resource out there. This is a living resource and you have to manage it.”

Danger signals
The following results came out of a 2003 CARICOM-EU workshop on the fishing industry in Guyana Suriname:

· Seabob –“Unless immediate action is taken, this fishery is likely to collapse. The effort (vessels) in this industry is three times that which was registered, thus a cap should be placed on the number of vessels in the fishery, with an eye to reducing same.”

· Trout and Bangamary – “These two ground-fish species showed that they were fully exploited by gillnets and trawl fishery. The artisanal gillnet is an open access fishery and measures should be taken to restrict the effort in the fishery”.

· Red Snapper – “the deep and slope fishery for southern red snapper was assessed and the initial results show that the fishery is underexploited. However, only one gear type was used in the assessment and further analysis needs to be done for a complete picture of this fishery, so it would be unwise to add any new vessels to the fishery at this time”.